


Starman

by carloabay



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Canonical Character Death, F/M, Original Character Death(s)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-28
Updated: 2020-06-28
Packaged: 2021-03-04 05:53:27
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,075
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24948724
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/carloabay/pseuds/carloabay
Summary: Peter Quill cares too much, or not enough.
Relationships: Gamora/Peter Quill, Meredith Quill & Peter Quill, Peter Quill & Guardians of the Galaxy Team, Peter Quill & Yondu Udonta
Kudos: 24





	Starman

**Author's Note:**

> Why so many tags? Why so sad? Why yet another song related fic? You may be asking.
> 
> The honest answer? I have no idea!

_There's a Starman, waiting in the sky..._

It's undignified, some would say, to drift interminably from life to death. That kind of death, the giving in. The letting go of the world. Peter remembers his grandfather watching Meredith Quill waste away on her hospital bed with pity and disgust in his eyes, and Peter had hated him for it. Nothing about her had been undignified. 

Now he wishes he'd taken her hand. But you can't change time, or disease, or the slow marching of death.

He spends his first few weeks in space, in _space_ , in a frenzy of bet-wetting and hoarse crying, and no one pays him attention, except Dorian the Shi'ar, who changes Peter's sheets and lets him touch the feathered crest on his head. Peter watches his first murder at the age of nine, and doesn't slept for the next week.

Peter first kills someone by accident. He was meant to shoot the shoulder, or the leg, to slow them down, not the _brain_. And when he goes back home with droplets of green blood on his face, Dorian just claps him on the shoulder and sends him stumbling to the showers.

He's never felt much like a Starman. He's felt like a bandit, or a murderer, or a scared boy surrounded by ruffians. Dorian dies by a Kree's blasters. Peter watches his body thrown unceremoniously through the airlock with a lackluster Ravager salute, and he races through the ship as they pass on, looking for one last glance of a frozen corpse's face. Yondu wraps Peter's small hands around a bigger weapon and tells him to aim for the head and never stop looking over his shoulder.

_He'd like to come and meet us, but he thinks he'd blow our minds..._

His kill count climbs and he drinks to celebrate and he stays on Yondu's good side until it's time to leave and make his own way. He's drunk when he blasts out the brains of a brawling, snarling Skrull, but it doesn't matter, because it never has. Can't stop the marching of death.

His Walkman dictates his steps, the rhythm of his guns, dancing along to a little kid's songs. He used to listen to them in a quiet field, in the heat of midday with a dignified woman and a sprawl of daisies. He steals and cheats and breaks intergalactic laws and does all with a rakish grin. He's a pirate, a bandit, a Ravager. He's not the Starman. He's the Star _lord_.

"Quill?" Gamora's heel digs into his thigh, and the break in her voice is like the warm rush of relief and oxygen as Peter watches the ice melt off her eyelashes. He so doesn't want to let go, but it's not because of the way he's pressed against her. It's because of the sting of a vacuum and the death-shrugging breath she took and the feeling that something was _alright_ when she coughed back to life in his arms just seconds ago. He presses his palm against her skin and brushes the care away with a stupid joke.

When Groot dies and Peter wipes soot-smeared tears from his cheeks, he doesn't remember ever caring. 

The Nova Corps dissipate in the sky, so many deaths, and Peter bids them goodbye without a memory of knowing or loving any of them.

Maybe it's just so ingrained into his very being from a laughing, dignified woman, that he can't help but care when they go. 

Groot's wooden bones litter the ground, and Peter cries, but it's the first time he's ever seen something born from another's death. A new Groot grins back at him with little fingers and bugs in his mouth, and Peter feels a lift, somewhere around his navel. Like he's not really missing anything anymore.

Yondu goes well, better than any Ravager could. Peter watches the fireworks burst life into a vacuum like a time-lapse of a galaxy living and dying.

_Look out your window, I can see his light..._

He cries, again, and hears his younger self ask if it ever gets easier to watch the people you care for slide from life to death in ease. He hears his younger self answer, but he can't quite make out the words.

Ego dies, and Peter finds, one last time, that he doesn't care. There's no space for sadness amidst anger and abandonment, and Ego's planet turns to dust and Peter turns away.

He jokes about money, but when they reach the distress call, they're far too late and space is littered with the remains of a ship and a people they couldn't get to in time. Peter watches the faces of frozen corpses stare blankly at the ship as they pass, and every single granule of ice collects underneath his heart. Gamora watches his expression go from Starlord's credit-fuelled smile to a little kid's shining eyes as Dorian the Shi'ar drifts away, alone and dead. She doesn't say anything, but the next time they touch, she holds his hand so much tighter. 

_He's told us not to blow it, cause he knows it's all worthwhile..._

If hate was what Peter felt for his grandfather from a simple look, he'll never describe the emotion that gets him to Titan to find Gamora. Tony Stark calls them 'plucky' and the kid in the weird costume gives them weird looks, and the guy with the funky beard and the cape tells them that they have one way to win. Better not blow it.

Not hate, just mindless rage. A driving to hurt the purple bastard like no one has ever felt pain before. Peter could cry and shake and scream, but that never brought his Mom back, so it won't bring Gamora back. He'll settle for revenge, instead. Starlord hits so hard that he draws blood from a Titan, he locks his muscles and clenches his teeth in a terrible snarl, and one more person he cared for has died, the last person, he swears, who will ever be taken from him.

Just before he goes, it's Drax and Mantis first. Maybe it's terror that chokes his spine when they turn to ash, or maybe it's exhaustion that has him sighing in some kind of relief when the world turns grey and puzzled and patchy. Relief. They're never really gone. Just waiting for us in the sky, on the other side of a thin line.

_There's a Starman..._

**Author's Note:**

> Well I hope you liked it, it ripped my heart out :)


End file.
